Normally in Tech at Night I try to find the big trends that can be pieced together from all the little stories we see going on. Right now the trend continues to be that Republicans are trying to make American Internet access even better than it already is, while the rest of the world is going in the wrong direction.
Don’t believe me? Europe wants to regulate the Internet even more. Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are hard at work looking to protect us online from China, and to make sure wireless spectrum is allocated efficiently, rather than set aside for Obama’s preferred vendors.
Is Google warming up to submission to Chinese censorship once again? I mean, they’re in so deep with Team Obama, and worked so hard to elect Obama, and celebrated the big government intrusion online in this country, called Net Neutrality.
As much as people reasonably question Google’s huge data gathering efforts in conjunction with Glass, what people need to understand is the game has changed forever. Once Glass is out, a) Google will lose control over what runs on it, b) Competitors will release knockoffs, and c) these knockoffs will get harder and harder to spot. In grappling with Glass, for the toughest issues, Google is a red herring.
Even as Reddit proves again to be antithetical to Republican values by attacking pro-lifers, we see that there’s apparently now an anti-anarchist, pro-American online criminal group called Antisec. Part of me wants to look the other way at an attack on RT with respect to traitor Bradley Manning and rapist Julian Assange, a foreign propaganda front. But never forget: DDoS attacks don’t just hurt the target. They hurt everyone else who uses the Internet. These must not be tolerated.
Quick hits: The government is hogging too much spectrum, which means we all suffer worse wireless Internet than we might have.
But it is interesting to see that there is an online gang on America’s side, the way other countries have on their sides.
I’m not the only one seeing the cultural leftward tilt of Rand Paul’s recent Silicon Valley trip.
How badly has the America Invents Act failed? Even Team Obama admits action is needed on patent litigation, after passage of the ABA’s pet patent bill.
I will be disappointed if House Republicans grow government into phone unlocking regulation.